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The ongoing conflagration in southern Israel and Gaza has been playing out on social network Twitter with no less ferocity than it is on the ground.

Pro-Palestinian elements managed to get the #Gaza tag bumped up on high on the "most tweeted" list yesterday, and the most "retweeted" message was one containing the image to the left, which was presented as a little girl heartlessly killed in an Israeli airstrike.

But intrepid social networkers soon discovered that the claim was a lie, that the picture in question was from 2006, and that the girl had died as the result of a playground accident.

Israel has in fact been going to great lengths to avoid civilian casualties as it responds to unprecedented rocket attacks on southern Israel. That means genuine pictures of Palestinian civilians being wounded or killed are probably few and far between, if there are any at all. So they simply manufactured them.